Limiting online anonymity - and why that’s a good thing
By Sarah WarnReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez has a good summary of the case of two former female Yale University law students who have settled their suit brought against some 30-plus anonymous commenters who posted derogatory remarks about them on an internet forum called AutoAdmit. Although the details of the settlement are private, it appears they received some sort of compensation from 8 or 9 of the commenters.
Before you start worrying that anonymity will go away on the web (not that this is even possible), the basis of the suit by these women was that the reportedly unsubstantiated and highly inflammatory personal attacks (including sexually explicit ones) were:
- made on a website frequented by potential employers (law firms)
- tied to the women’s real names (so anyone doing a Google search on their names could easily find these comments).
I’m all for free speech, and I believe the anonymity provided by the internet is really good in a lot of ways (allowing closeted or questioning gay or bisexual people to be out online, for example). But as someone who has run a very large community, I’ve seen how detrimental anonymous commenting can be, both to the community and to the individuals being attacked. Although most commenters are fairly respectful (or at least not outright malicious), I’ve been appalled over the years to see what some people will say when they can hide behind anonymity — things I doubt they would ever say if they had to attach their real names to it — if they had to be personally accountable for their own speech.
I also believe community owners or moderators have a responsibility to prevent abuse of anonymity. Unfortunately, a law called “Section 230″ currently immunizes internet publishers from legal harm, so the women could not sue AutoAdmit for refusing to remove the comments, they could only go after the anonymous commenters themselves. Perez points out the problems with this law:
At the time of its establishment in the 90’s, however, those “publishers” were the ISPs themselves - the AOLs and CompuServes that delivered Internet access to consumers. The idea of bloggers, social media publishers, and anonymous blog and forum commenters didn’t really exist yet and therefore wasn’t taken into consideration.
It’s the policy of AfterEllen.com’s community to remove personal attacks, or racist, sexist or homophobic comments, and while I’m the first to admit the line can be fuzzy sometimes, I believe I should absolutely be held responsible if I allow comments that clearly cross the line to stand (as long as I’ve first been made aware of them).
I’m not suggesting people shouldn’t be able to have freedom of speech on the internet, or that there shouldn’t be anonymity, but I do believe there should be legal recourse available for those who are subject to personal attacks online made by people hiding behind anonymity, just as there is in the offline world. As more and more employers and schools use the internet to research potential employees or students, malicious and unsubstantiated attacks have real-world effects beyond just hurting someone’s feelings.
Jessica Valenti of Feministing.com makes a similar point in a great piece she wrote in 2007 for The Guardian entitled “How the web became a sexists’ paradise” about the particularly detrimental effect anonymity is having on women online:
While online harassment doesn’t necessarily create the same immediate safety concerns as street harassment, the consequences are arguably more severe. If someone calls you a “slut” on the street, it stings - but you can move on. If someone calls you a “slut” online, there’s a public record as long as the site exists … And for young women applying for jobs, the reality is terrifying. Imagine a potential employer searching for information and coming across a thread about what a “whore” you are.
Sometimes the attacks are even more personal, as Valenti recounts the story of a woman who received harassing comments on her site that escalated to death threats and the publication of her social security number and home address — all from anonymous commenters, of course.
If the threat of being sued for libel makes someone think twice before posting those kinds of comments, then I say bring it on.
“I’m not suggesting people shouldn’t be able to have freedom of speech on the internet, or that there shouldn’t be anonymity, but I do believe there should be legal recourse available for those who are subject to personal attacks online made by people hiding behind anonymity, just as there is in the offline world.”
Yes! Thank you for a reasonable opinion on this. I’ve used a pseudonym online for years, for several different reasons, but I’m fully prepared to stand by everything I’ve said. It bothers me a whole lot that privacy seems to be used much more often as a means to get away with harmful behaviour than to actually protect anyone.
Even open forums like Craigslist can get incredibly hostile when people start publishing defamatory comments, naming people, giving out addresses, and making any number of unsubstantiated accusation…all while hiding like cowards behind anonymity. Yes, you can get Craigslist to delete those posts, but the damage has been done, and you have to be aware it was going on in the first place. If not, those posts stay there and continue to inflict damage.
So yeah, there should be real consequences for online harassment.
Sarah,
I don’t know if this is the right place to write this but I just wanted to say a big thank you for your tireless work on AfterEllen. Anyone who was a regular visitor to that site knows that when you say you need to catch up on 8 years of sleep you aren’t exaggerating.
AfterEllen was a window into the LGBT world for me when I was fourteen, very frightened and very alone. It normalised lesbianism for me and was a place where I could breathe out. And I know that I am just one of sixty thousand others for whom this is true.
So thank you. Best luck in your future endeavours. Have a few lie-ins!
“If the threat of being sued for libel makes someone think twice before posting those kinds of comments, then I say bring it on.”
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Hey Sarah
This is a nice idea in theory, however, I think it’s an area which will suffer greatly (definitely in the short-medium term) due to the difficulty of prosecution and enforcement in an online environment.
Putting aside the ease with which anonymity can be maintained online, the other issue is that the global nature of the internet in both its usage and infrastructure means that enforcement would be subject to the differences in internet/privacy legislation in each jurisdiction.
As such, I’m unconvinced that the threat of being sued for libel for anonymous online content will really make folks think twice before posting some nastiness.
Definitely a ‘watch this space’ area though.
Cheers
Bob
Considering that the law lags waaay behind the realities of the internet in general, I do believe online privacy and harassment will be addressed, eventually. Though the internet is global in nature, how likely are you to be harassed by some unknown person in Malaysia or China if you’re located in the US, or vice versa? The issue of harassment of a kind that can lead to defamation is mostly going to be relevant in certain confined circles, mostly work and educational institutions. Foreign based websites that host open, anonymous sites/features can be held accountable for moderating their sites…if there’s a law. It’s definitely doable, and I would say is increasingly becoming recognized as necessary.
There is only going to be an increase in these kinds of lawsuits, and when the website owners themselves begin to be held accountable for abuse by anonymous users that they enable, things will begin to change ahead of the law having to define parameters.
Thanks for all the thoughtful comments! I agree that any kind of law around this is going to be difficult to implement/enforce given the international nature of the web, I guess I’m hoping most people won’t figure that out and will just be deterred by the threat of being sued.